A Case for Logic

A teacher once told me that you can’t intellectualize spirit. I agree with this statement for the most part, because certainly spirit is experienced in the present moment only. As soon as we apply a label, our awareness of spirit becomes a construct of mind rather than the pure experience of being.

But we are human, and in this physical form we are self-aware, and we learn. We use the mind to process our experience and choose who we want to be. We are divine mind in action.

Most of you know that a favorite spiritual practice of mine is writing letters to God. A recent letter to God about forgetting caused me to make a case for logic as a spiritual tool.

God responded to me, in part, that “whether you’re remembering or forgetting the truth of who you are in any moment doesn’t change the truth. But the question becomes, ‘How do you experience your own expression in the world as infinitely good enough when earlier experience tried to teach you otherwise? How do you trust the truth of God within you when others can’t trust it either?’

“The truth stands unchanged in the midst of all; therefore, you need to question the voices that say you are anything less than God. Think about it – you are light, or you are not. You are perfect, or you are not. I live in and as you, or I do not. Since both cannot be true, which truth do you choose to serve? Your heart knows the truth and speaks it to you in countless different ways. “

Thank you, God, for appealing to logic when that was what I needed!

I’ve been facilitating a spiritual weight loss support group at Unity, following a book by Marianne Williamson. In a chapter on the importance of feeling our feelings in order to learn from and process them, she makes another strong case for logic as a spiritual tool.

Following is a delightful excerpt from her book, A Course in Weight Loss. She is talking about feeling overwhelmed as a natural consequence of failing to recognize a divine hand upholding all things.

“If you feel you must control everything by yourself – if you don’t feel you can ask for God’s help with the details – then no wonder you feel absolutely overwhelmed. You can’t exactly hold up the stars in the sky, but obviously someone does. So couldn’t that someone hold and harmonize the circumstances of your life? (I love this! Logic at its best. . .)

She goes on to say that “In fact, the entire universe is held safely in Divine hands. Planets revolve around the sun, stars stay in the sky, cells divide, and embryos turn into babies. Embryos don’t exclaim, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this! I don’t know how to cell-divide!’ The embryo doesn’t have to know. An order bigger than the embryo moves it forward as part of nature’s blueprint.”

If that’s not a strong (and logical) argument in favor of God in all things, I don’t know what is!

Thank you, Marianne Williamson, and may this tool be a blessing.

It's Here!! Daily Spiritual Tools, the Book

I am proud to announce that Daily Spiritual Tools is now available as an e-book.  I received feedback from many of this blog's followers that they would appreciate these tools in book form, and am happy to say that it has come to fruition!

Daily Spiritual Tools celebrates the existence of the divine in all human experience.  It’s a compilation of 79 meditations and simple practices that open our awareness to perfect and divine order within all things.  As humankind moves from a truth of spirituality “out there” to one of God expressing as each of us and in all things, the tools contained in the book help us accept that truth and know it as our own.  In doing so we help elevate others and our world.

I've said many times that I write to remember, and Daily Spiritual Tools has been a labor of love, and remembering, for me.  Through this blog I have had the opportunity to connect with amazing people from all around our wonderful world.  It's uplifting to know that there are so many like-minded souls working to raise the consciousness of the world one person at a time.  I am sincerely grateful for your kindness, insight and love.

Copies of Daily Spiritual Tools, the Book, are available through Amazon.com and smashwords.com.  If you know someone who might enjoy reading my book, I would appreciate your spreading the word in any way that seems appropriate.

May this book be as much a blessing to you in reading it as it has been to me in writing it...

Joy in Small Things

Let me always find joy in small things!  The everyday things that might easily have gone unnoticed are special gifts.

I've never noticed birds a great deal, but lately I'm learning how delightful they are.  Last month when we were backpacking there was a very bold red-headed woodpecker who was quite comfortable right out in the open in our campsite.  He kept an eye on us like the guardian of the forest, and we enjoyed his company.

There's a group of birds that congregate in the mornings to bathe in a big puddle that forms at the edge of the grass outside the window where I work.  What a delight when I'm starting my day to stop for a minute and watch them.  To say that they are bathing is an understatement; it looks more like a raucous dance as they change positions and get completely down into the water and shake for all they're worth.

And what a hoot watching the birds in our backyard, oh my goodness!  We hung a new bird feeder closer to the house, which is suspended by a string and able to spin around freely.  It has six little holes and posts for the birds to perch on as they eat, and it's really funny watching them holding on and spinning around like they're on a thrill ride at the fair.  Centrifugal force pushes some off, but they come back for more.  And there's that one determined soul who's sometimes left spinning around and around by himself like king of the hill.  What beautiful and fun moments, and all I had to do for them was stop and notice.

I'm learning to acknowledge small things, and be grateful for them.  I was looking for an important piece of mail recently and realized that it had probably been taken out by mistake with the recycling.  When I went to check there it was, right where the recycling had been, and it had either slipped out of the pile or had been on the bottom.  Little serendipitous things that seem random or like blind luck are gifts from heaven.

There are so many examples of perfect good at work, a much-needed break in traffic when we're late,  a song on the radio with exactly the lyrics we'd been needing to hear, or a stranger getting to the door at just the same time we do and opening it for us, because our arms are full.

I'm remembering to say thank you now when these things happen.  When we are grateful we make room for more good things in our lives, large and small.

May you always notice the grace in small things, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Full-Out Loving Life

I had dinner the other night with a dear friend of mine named Jeri.  In the 20 years I've known her, I've always admired and appreciated her loving acceptance, her openness, her unfailing concern, and the bright light she shines in the world.

It's fitting that Jeri forwarded to me the following wonderful quote from Neale Walsch.  We cannot be conscious of something that we ourselves do not possess, so I'm not surprised that this quote spoke to Jeri.  She is God, and love, in expression. 

"It is the full-out loving of life, and all that life presents in every moment, that is the expression of Godliness."

I think I'm maybe just starting to get it, at this time in my life, on the far side of middle age but definitely not old yet, that I can trust God.

It's a tall order, I think, to approach every situation without worry or fear, and trust that perfect good is at work in all things.  I know it in my head, and often feel it in my heart.  I write about it and I believe every word I say.

In a moment, though, my trust is quickly replaced by fear when something happens that feels threatening, or like it should be different.  It happened this morning, reading in the paper about people struggling against oppression and famine, the worldwide economy, and democracies flailing.

I can visualize a world where all people move through the circumstances of their days with an open heart and an abiding love for being there in the middle of all of it.  But we can only do that when we surrender our need to understand and control, and begin to trust a perfection that we have no way of really understanding anyway, while in this physical form.

And so we choose, and choose again.  In each moment, when we notice we are afraid, we affirm, as Unity teaches, that fear has no power over us, and that there really is only one presence and one power, God the Good.

We acknowledge our fear and our resistance and then we choose the truth we will serve in that moment.  There will always be circumstances that shake our truth, but that doesn't change it.  All of the things that flame our fears provide divine and holy opportunities to remember that we create this world according to what we hold as truth.

It's a huge leap of faith, but we can do it. We are doing it.

In the middle of situations that shake our faith to the core, and in the midst of all evidence to the contrary,  we trust, and we choose, perfect Good.  And for me that's the crux of the matter, because when I trust that there is a much larger good at work, even though it can't be understood with my limited human thinking, I can embrace all of it.  I can love life.  And I am brought full-circle, by allowing God, I experience my own Godliness.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Just Listen

My husband and I recently returned from a wonderful backpacking trip, where I was reminded of the simple tool of just listening.  When we’re backpacking listening is easier, without clocks or cell phones or anything we have to do except be there. 

Sitting quietly surrounded by nature’s beauty is a perfect time to ask of divine intelligence, “What would you have me remember right now?”  We are always answered when we think to stop and ask. 

I have had some wonderful conversations with God sitting on a log overlooking a little alpine lake at 9,000 feet, and although nature does help our connection with the divine, we can stop to listen anytime.

The quiet voice of God within us, while ever present, often goes unnoticed when our minds are too busy with the details of life.  So it’s helpful to cultivate strategies that allow us to stop, and hear the voice of the larger truth that imbues all life experience. 

One thing that helps me hear is to write.  My journal-writing has transitioned over the years into part journal, part letter to God, and part God’s response to me.  My journal entries have begun “Dear God” for awhile now, and as I spill my thoughts and feelings onto paper God’s perspective begins to come through in what I’m writing, as direction or validation or loving acceptance. 

Of course it’s all God.  As I write to God I write to myself, and as God’s responses come through in what I’ve written, I know that God within me has all of the answers that I will ever need.  There is nothing I lack.

Certainly prayer and meditation are important ways to listen to the highest within us, whether we seek to know what our best course of action might be, or just want to hear what God is wanting to say to us in that moment.

We can also just take a minute and stop.  When we pull our awareness back from the racing thoughts of the day, God is there, in the voice of loving wisdom that lives in our hearts.

May this tool be a blessing. . .

Being Peace

Our physical bodies are designed to process spiritual energy.  All thoughts or emotions, every decision, the dynamics in relationships, are at their core vibrations of spiritual energy.  These myriad vibrations of energy are divine consciousness in action, creating all of the experience available to us in remembering that we are God.

It is important to remember that experience can be conscious or unconscious; sometimes we are aware of the vibrations passing through us, and sometimes we are not, but we are still affected by their presence.  There are countless examples of this, but a very common one might be feeling peaceful, and then walking into a room with one or more people and having your mood quickly fall to a lower vibration, such as competition, self-consciousness or contention.  While we would most likely own this lower vibration as something within us that we have created, it is actually us absorbing a vibration moving through that is not us at all.

On a minute-to-minute basis we are being affected by, and responding to, vibrations of spiritual energy.  With awareness, spiritual energy is something that we can manage more consciously.  Not only can we choose to accept, or release what is "going by," we can also "set the energy" in our bodies to any vibration that we prefer.  It is our spiritual birthright, as unlimited creators made in God's image, to design our best life.

There are a number of ways to consciously design our bodies' energy.  Lately I've been choosing to set my body's energy at "peace."  Because we create that which we focus our intention upon, simply choosing peace, owning peace, and remembering and affirming that "I am peace," makes it so.  By doing this we reset the vibration of the body.

An even more powerful technique for setting the vibration in the body is to use the clairvoyant ability that is innate in all of us, which can be found in the mind's eye, and in our imagination.  The idea of peace, and any other thing we can imagine in this lifetime, vibrates at a certain frequency, and that frequency can be seen as a color.  Because we all see color in our own way, there is no right or wrong way to do it.

Today, in my mind's eye, peace is light yellow.  Now I decide, how shall I fill myself with peace?  The simpler the better, so I am back in kindergarten.  I see a big yellow ball of peace above me, and I bring it down into the top of my head and watch, in my imagination, as it moves through me and fills every cell of my body.  Or I "see" the air around me filled with peaceful yellow light, and I breathe deeply.  And now I watch, in my limitless imagination, as I fill a giant pitcher with the color of peace, and pour it out over the top of my head and it washes over me, releasing anything I hold on to that is not peaceful.

I find new joy in coming as a child, as I remember that I am peace.

May your life be a rainbow of colors of your own design, and may this tool be a blessing. . .

Welcoming All

A favorite quote, from Rumi:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival,
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your home
Empty of it's furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be cleaning you out
For some new delight.

May you cherish every moment of your amazing life, and may this tool be a blessing. . .